Schoolyards

I have been working with the Boston Schoolyard Initiative on a number of projects. This pate highlights the results of that research.

The Boston Schoolyard Initiative (BSI) is an innovative public-private partnership that is working to restore open spaces at Boston public schools. In addition to renovations, they also run teacher training programs and have a special focus on designing and helping schools use outdoor classrooms. For more information on the BSI, go to their website:

In 2008, my colleagues, James Jennings and Richard Campbell, and I published a policy review of how the BSI's public private and community based participatory process has helped not only restore schoolyards, but also the neighborhoods around there. This analysis, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Active Living Research group, can be found here:

We also analyzed how the renovated schoolyards were impacting students at the school. In a study peer reviewed and published by the Mauricio Gaston Institute at UMass Boston, we found that after controlling for demographic factors, students at renovated schools were approximately 25% more likely to pass the 4th grade MCAS (the Massachusetts Standardized test). The study can be found here:

In order to assist other communities to develop their own public-private partnerships to renovate schoolyards and playgrounds, my colleague James Jennings and I have developed a workbook that other communities might use. This work was fnded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The workbook can be found here:

We have continued to analyze results by school to develop a portrait of how renovated schoolyards are affecting students and teachers. We re-analyzed the 4th grade math data to control for prerenovation performance. We again found that renovated schools did better on the 4th grade MCAS after controlling for demographics (and prerenovation scores). We also found that student and teacher attendance was higher at renovated schools and that suspensions were lower. This analysis has not been submitted for peer review or publication. However, a preliminary report can be found here: